Well Being Trust in ACTION:Demonstrating Commitment to Advancing the Mental, Social, and Spiritual Health of the Nation

Led by clinical, community, and policy experts, Well Being Trust (WBT) brings a systems approach to prevention, treatment, and recovery for mental health and substance misuse issues, while prioritizing an upstream focus on resilience and well-being.

Through partnerships and strategic investments, WBT is transforming clinical delivery and helping foster community conditions—focused on equity—for intergenerational, lasting well-being that will ensure everyone can realize their fullest potential.

As a national foundation focused solely on mental health and well-being, WBT is strategically positioned to support the advancing mental health movement that is occurring in this country by concurrently applying five strategies to assure population level impacts.

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1. CLINICAL TRANSFORMATION: Shifting the question from “What’sthe matter with you?” to “What matters to you?” and embracing awhole-person (spirit, mind, and body) whole-systems design forservices and supports across the continuum of care.

2. COMMUNITY TRANSFORMATION: There are bright spotsthroughout the country where communities have come together

to improve the health and well-being of their family andneighbors; these must be amplified, shared and, as possible,brought to scale.

3. POLICY AND ADVOCACY: Developing and leveraging key publicpolicy and advocacy initiatives that result in improved clinical andcommunity outcomes.

4. SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT: Increasing awareness of the issues in away that reduces stigma, normalizes conversations, and engagespeople so they can show up for one another.

5. DATA AND MEASUREMENT: Integrating and harnessing data to

identify problems, inform solutions, and measure impact toensure interventions are having impact at scale—ultimatelypreventing problems from becoming larger ones.

With life expectancy dropping for a second straight year, now is the time to invest and partner with WBT, which would allow for us to scale efforts, increase support to more people, and deepen the impact of the work happening all over the country.

Well Being Trust provided investment to Be Well OC (Orange County),

resulting in the creation of the Be Well Blueprint, which established a

plan for a dynamic ecosystem of interconnected stakeholders, each

charged with improving access, quality of care, and population health

outcomes more cost-effectively and with better value. This

ecosystem, with three different “anchor wellness hubs” across the

county, will address prevention, early intervention, crisis aversion,

stabilization and acute care, and recovery by focusing on physical

health, mental health, and substance use services.

Well Being Trust, in partnership with the Institute for Healthcare

Improvement, has brought together eight leading health systems

paired with community partners in an 18-month Learning Community,

set within pilot emergency departments. Participants are testing a

change package that includes fully integrating behavioral health in

emergency departments and the community. The project will

demonstrate that health systems can improve patient outcomes and

experience while, at the same time, reducing emergency room

utilization by optimizing patient access to community resources, like

social safety net programs. Once completed, the models can be

scaled to additional sites across systems.

Since January 2017, Well Being Trust has invested nearly $30 million in more than 60 projects

and created more than three dozen new partnerships to address clinical and community

transformation, policy and advocacy, social engagement, and measurement and data systems.

Following are a few examples.

Well Being Trust worked with Providence St. Joseph Health system leaders to establish a

Clinical Performance Group—a multi-year learning collaborative that addresses three of the

most pressing and cost-driving challenges within the health system: integrating behavioral

health into primary care; transforming substance use treatment and services; and finding

better ways to care for people with mental health issues in the emergency department.

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Clinical Transformation

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Policy and AdvocacyThrough partnership with Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood

Johnson Foundation, we released Pain in the Nation: The Drug, Alcohol and Suicide

Epidemics and the Need for a National Resilience Strategy, resulting in significant media

coverage. The report presented 60 evidence-based policy and advocacy strategies to

help decrease deaths due to alcohol, drugs and suicide and called for a national

resilience strategy, which has since been fleshed out into an interactive web-based

experience. In addition, along with TFAH, we’ve issued three new policy briefs, focused

on alcohol, drug and suicide death rate disparities; the education sector; and healthcare

systems. In total, work around the main report, briefs and interactives resulted in

1,000,000 social impressions and more than 1,000 print/online/broadcast stories, with

a publicity value of nearly $1 million.

With the Bipartisan Policy Center, we are conducting a thorough review of existing

research and stakeholder engagement to identify gaps in information necessary to

make policy decisions, including gaps in evidence and analysis. This deep dive will

expand to include gaps in political information and the federal and state policy

environment surrounding behavioral health policy development. The product will be a

major public release of an actionable policy options document—which includes an

assessment of the merits of each approach—that will also include a live webcast and

dissemination to media and members and staff of Congress.

Community TransformationWell Being Trust funded the Oregon Governor’s Children and

Youth with Special Health Needs Workgroup to provide

actionable solutions for Oregon’s most vulnerable children—

those in foster care or at risk of going into foster care and who

are struggling with mental health and/or intellectual

development disabilities. The group brought together 42 public/

private stakeholder organizations and charged them with

developing actionable policy and legislative reforms. Ultimately,

the group, with near unanimity, provided recommendations,

which are being fleshed out into policy option packages and

legislative concepts by the Governor’s office. The effort should

result in reform of Oregon’s system of care for the state’s most

vulnerable populations, allowing space to shift focus to

preventing problems from occurring to begin with.

To deepen our learning and begin to coalesce around an

actionable set of promising strategies for positive impact, Well

Being Trust has travelled across the country, hearing from

thousands of community members and leaders about their

experiences (good, bad, and otherwise) in creating the

conditions for well-being. This listening and learning tour

culminated in the creation of Well Being Legacy, which

highlights dozens of community successes and raises them up

to serve as examples. Going forward, Well Being Legacy—which

is being advanced via a growing partnership of more than 50

local communities and national organizations—is connecting

leaders across traditional and non-traditional

sectors, thereby creating complementary

benefits (co-benefits) for the built

environment,for racial equity, for food

justice, for improved child development,

among others.

Well Being Trust is incubating a new social venture

led by the 19th Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, MD.

With our support, his formative entity is building out

the science base and growing the public/influencer

discourse on what increases and what depletes

personal, family and community well-being. Dr.

Murthy now serves as our first senior fellow, helping

guide our Advisory Council.

Measurement and Data SystemsWell Being Trust continues to increase investments in measurement and data systems to demonstrably improve effectiveness of the field in three areas:

Social EngagementWe partnered with iHeartMedia, BuzzFeed and Complex to launch the #BeWell, #BeHeard, #BeThere tween/teen campaign to

remove stigma and activate youth to support each other’s well-being. This campaign also gives parents and families tools to start

conversations and find common ground. Since the campaign launch in August 2017, we have helped spark more than 90 million

impressions, including 80,000 uses of the hashtags #BeWell and #BeHeard, activating youth to stand up for mental health and well-

being. Our work has received notable support from national personas such as Abby Wambach, Brandon Marshall and Azealia Banks,

among many others. Through on-air, digital and social promotions as well as live event activation at high schools and community

gatherings, this effort is successfully starting important conversations, reducing stigma, and engaging youth as champions.

In early 2018, the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health approached Well Being Trust to develop an awareness campaign

focused on mental health and wellness. Given WBT’s expertise in connecting across channels with teens, tweens and millennials and

helping reduce the stigma associated with mental health, our support expertise was exactly what they needed as they began their

campaign. Launched publicly in May 2018, the campaign, Why We Rise, quickly became a call to action, asking people to join a

movement to break through barriers and defy old assumptions about mental health care. Well Being Trust

helped amplify the #WhyWeRise message and the importance of telling one’s mental health story.

1. Assessing the current state of mental health and well-being to gain unique insights into places and populations who are

facing significant issues and barriers to accessing care;

2. Measuring the progress of WBT investments toward achieving our larger vision; and,

3. Communicating what we’ve learned and accomplished to the wider clinical and non-profit community to help rally

others to the cause.

To accomplish these goals, we are:

• Using and contributing to open source projects—as a foundation, our core mission is to contribute to the public good, so, as we

build technology, we want to actively support the open source culture by using and contributing our code where practical;

• Relying on open data standards—we have the unique opportunity to inform the national conversation about measuring mental

health and well-being, but, unless we make our data open and easily accessible, we won’t succeed in changing the larger

conversation; and,

• Iterating and rapidly improving—to spend our resources wisely, we will focus our process on using an ‘agile’ development

methodology that ensures we can make a minimum investment in order to achieve the greatest results.

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